I have always been pushed by the negative. The apparent failure of a play sends me back to my typewriter that very night, before the reviews are out. I am more compelled to get back to work than if I had a success.

Happy is he who still loves something he loved in the nursery: He has not been broken in two by time; he is not two men, but one, and he has saved not only his soul but his life.

I’ve always appreciated a turn of phrase.

I never thought of losing, but now that it‘ s happened, the only thing is to do it right. That’s my obligation to all the people who believe in me. We all have to take defeats in life.

I think I belong to America’s last generation of novelists. Novelists will come one by one from now on, not in seeming families, and will perhaps write only one or two novels, and let it go at that.

Usually I start with a beat, I start making a beat, and my producer side is making the beat. And on a good day, my rapper side will jump in and start the writing process – maybe come up with a hook or start a verse. Sometimes it just happens like that. A song like ‚Lights Please‘ happens like that.

We herd sheep, we drive cattle, we lead people. Lead me, follow me, or get out of my way.

Live your life, do your work, then take your hat.

They died hard, those savage men – like wounded wolves at bay. They were filthy, and they were lousy, and they stunk. And I loved them.

I love to sing and I really love to write, but in terms of being onstage, I’m not that comfortable, which I think is sort of clear.

For me, money is not my definition of success. Inspiring people is a definition of success.

I’ve felt like an outsider all my life. It comes from my mother, who always felt like an outsider in my father’s family. She was a powerful woman, and she motivated my father.

If you start by promising what you don’t even have yet, you’ll lose your desire to work towards getting it.

History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.

Let my skin and sinews and bones dry up, together with all the flesh and blood of my body! I welcome it! But I will not move from this spot until I have attained the supreme and final wisdom.

Always fall in with what you’re asked to accept. Take what is given, and make it over your way. My aim in life has always been to hold my own with whatever’s going. Not against: with.

Everything in the world exists to end up in a book.

It’s not ‚can‘; it’s ‚will.‘ You have to will things into fruition.

Real courage is when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.

And as a writer, one of the things that I’ve always been interested in doing is actually invading your comfort space. Because that’s what we’re supposed to do. Get under your skin, and make you react.

Everyone needs a coach. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a basketball player, a tennis player, a gymnast or a bridge player.

Racing, competing, it’s in my blood. It’s part of me, it’s part of my life; I have been doing it all my life and it stands out above everything else.

Of course it would be nice for everybody and myself if we could win but we can still have a personal or a team win if we achieve a target that is effectively a win for us.

Never let your head hang down. Never give up and sit down and grieve. Find another way. And don’t pray when it rains if you don’t pray when the sun shines.

I’ve had some dark nights of the soul, of course, but giving in to depression would be a sellout, a defeat.

Like anything else that happens on its own, the act of writing is beyond currency. Money is great stuff to have, but when it comes to the act of creation, the best thing is not to think of money too much. It constipates the whole process.

I can understand how some people might resent me for having the audacity to continue playing music, but it’d take a lot more than that to stop me from doing it. I started Foo Fighters because I didn’t want to retreat.

God wants you to be a winner, not a whiner.

Lets have faith that right makes might; and in that faith let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.

Historian: an unsuccessful novelist.

I wrote some of the worst poetry west from the Mississippi River, but I wrote. And I finally sometimes got it right.

Truth cannot be brought down; rather, the individual must make the effort to ascend to it. You cannot bring the mountaintop to the valley. If you would attain to the mountaintop, you must pass through the valley, climb the steeps, unafraid of the dangerous precipices.

The happiness of this life depends less on what befalls you than the way in which you take it.

There are basically two types of people. People who accomplish things, and people who claim to have accomplished things. The first group is less crowded.

Let every dawn be to you as the beginning of life, and every setting sun be to you as its close.

Things do not always happen the way I would like them to happen, and I had better get used to that.

One word from the Lord is like a piece of gold to a believer, who is like a jeweler, shaping and hammering out the promise for a number of weeks.

You know, not to sound corny or nuthin‘, but I felt like a fighter comin‘ up, man. I felt like, you know, I’m being attacked for this reason or that reason, and I gotta fight my way through this.

I’m writing an unauthorized autobiography.

There can be no better grounding for a lifetime as an author than to see humanity in all its various guises through the lens of the reporter for the town.

A good objective of leadership is to help those who are doing poorly to do well and to help those who are doing well to do even better.

With self-discipline most anything is possible.

Almost any biographer, if he respects facts, can give us much more than another fact to add to our collection. He can give us the creative fact; the fertile fact; the fact that suggests and engenders.

Winning takes precedence over all. There’s no gray area. No almosts.

At one point he decided enough was enough.

Do the difficult things while they are easy and do the great things while they are small. A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.

If you take no risks, you will suffer no defeats. But if you take no risks, you win no victories.

The problem with writing a book in verse is, to be successful, it has to sound like you knocked it off on a rainy Friday afternoon. It has to sound easy. When you can do it, it helps tremendously because it’s a thing that forces kids to read on. You have this unconsummated feeling if you stop.

Affirmation without discipline is the beginning of delusion.

Never say no when a client asks for something, even if it is the moon. You can always try, and anyhow there is plenty of time afterwards to explain that it was not possible.

I’d rather be a victor than a victim.

I’ve never been a very prolific person, so when creativity flows, it flows. I find myself scribbling on little notepads and pieces of loose paper, which results in a very small portion of my writings to ever show up in true form.

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

I got a greater purpose. God put something in my heart to get across, and that’s what I’m going to focus on, using my voice as an instrument and doing what needs to be done.

Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.

When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.

Necessity is the mother of taking chances.

It is healthier, in any case, to write for the adults one’s children will become than for the children one’s ‚mature‘ critics often are.

My life has been long, and believing that life loves the liver of it, I have dared to try many things, sometimes trembling, but daring still.

I don’t know if I officially proofread my father’s book, but I read it. I did get some conception of grammar in general from that.

It’s when you begin to lie to yourself in a poem in order to simply make a poem, that you fail.